Memory Lapse (London): Eamon Sheen

‘Fiction’. All of the names below are made up.

I didn’t know Eamon Sheen for long. A few years in the nineties. We all have these people who are part of our lives for a while and then gone.

I liked Eamon because he was soft and read a lot and drank too much. And because he had a rather aristocratic way of answering the telephone at London Transport, where we worked. One day I found Eamon’s diary in the back office. Eamon was a junior manager. He’d left it there the night before. There were hammer-and-sickles drawn all over the diary. I asked him about it when we were out drinking one night. Eamon muttered something about Pol Pot and ‘Year Zero’ being the right idea, and we laughed at him. Eamon’s dad owned William Hill or something. We put Eamon’s fury down to the gin.

Eamon liked gin. He was only in his twenties, but he’d walk down the Uxbridge Road wearing just shorts and slippers to pick up a bottle of gin or two. You could tell he slept where he fell every night. He used to walk into the office each morning looking stunned as a baby, with salve on his chapped lips, and grease flattening his hair.

One September Saturday, Eamon and I got caught up in some football violence in Northampton.

If Eamon Sheen had a team it was Spurs. But he had time for Fulham, and used to come down there with me a lot. This was in the days before Fayed, when football supporters like Eamon were quite fond of Fulham. We used to joke that the average Fulham supporter- we reckoned there were four or five thousand, then- was ninety years old, skint, and Irish.

Another reason Eamon liked Fulham was local pride, and a drinker’s psychogeography. To Eamon, going to watch Fulham on a Saturday meant the cheap pubs on King Street, pubs on the river in Hammersmith; it opened up possibilities across the bridge in Putney, in West Kensington, all sorts. And so Fulham reminded Eamon of his area and his home and all the streets and pubs of his life.

The night before the game Eamon stayed in my flat in Pimlico.  We got canned up and played table football. I remember us laughing about the sweat Eamon worked up. We stopped playing for a moment and Eamon stood there dripping with sweat from the game and we looked at each other and laughed. He looked like he’d had a bath fully clothed. He said, “I haven’t been this fired up for a long time,” and we kept laughing.

Next morning we got the train at Euston. Liverpool were playing in Birmingham and there were hundreds of London Liverpool supporters milling around carrying ‘Anfield’ flags and eating Burger King. One of them sat opposite us on the train. He had a thermos flask. He started telling us about all the football grounds he’d visited. We were drunk already. Eamon said to him, “You are the near future of football,” and went to sleep with his head crushed against the window.

I dozed. I spilled Heineken. Now and again, with one eye, I watched Fulham supporters go past. There’d be a flash of away colours, the red and the black. That was a reason I loved Fulham; the away colours. Same colours as the anarcho-syndicalists in the Spanish Civil War. And Malevich…he must’ve been Fulham, too…what was it he said? “The basic colours of Suprematism are white, black and red.”

One time I woke and the carriage had got quiet. I looked out the window. This bit of England looked like the bit before. Windblown sports fields and warehouses. Cars and car parks. Gravel and weeds. I kicked Eamon’s leg. He looked at me with a red eye. I said, “This is England,” and nodded out the window. “This is what my country looks like.” Eamon looked out. He took a swig from his can. Heineken ran down his chin. He said, “I know.”

Northampton were one of the first smaller clubs to move their stadium out of town. I can’t remember how we got there. When we did, the whole place seemed to be constructed in a desolate micro-environment of artificial grassy slopes and roundabouts. Across from the ground was a pub built into the side of shops and offices, all in new orange brick. Nowadays those kind of out-of-town places are ten-a-penny. But at the time, this Butlins-at-Treblinka atmosphere was strange to us.

The pub was full of Fulham. Our voices got louder. My pint felt wet and heavy in my hand. A small man with a pot belly and a comb-over stood next to me. He wore a home made Johnny Haynes T-shirt with hand-drawn lettering on it. His mate had frizzy hair that rose from behind a bald forehead, an enormous gut, and red hands.

A big chant of ‘We All Piss In A Blue and White Pot’ went up. Some plastic glasses went up with it. The men next to me looked around the pub. They held their pints against their guts. The small man got alcopop sprayed across his T-shirt.

“It’s nice to see so many people here,” said the big man.

Fulham won 1-0. There were 1,500 Fulham fans there. Their noise seemed to rebound around the small stadium. Chants went on forever. They went on so long it made everyone laugh. There was waving to and from the players. At one point there seemed to be a bit of trouble over the other side of the away end. You could see the stewards fussing about and a few lads running. People getting chucked out. Then a quick chant over there: “Where’s your green shirt gone? Where’s your green shirt gone?” At the final whistle, Eamon and the man next to him hugged each other. No-one wanted to leave.

As we filed down the steps off the terrace we noticed a young steward looking at us. He tried to look away but we’d absorbed him already. He was young but he had thick grey streaks in his ratty hair. I shouted, “Grecian two thousand.” Then Eamon shouted. A few other people took it up. “Gre-cian two thou-sand.” The kid looked morose. He had a big nose. We kept shouting with cupped hands as we walked past him.

Outside we were buzzing. Eamon kept giggling and singing. We made our way across the artificial hills to the bus stop. There were bunches of people, fields of parked cars, shouts everywhere. As we got near the bus stop the shouts got louder, desperate even. We saw blurred figures running about outside the pub at the top of the slope. Then a youth was running down the slope towards the bus. He was being chased. The man after him took a big swiping kick at the air he’d just left behind. Another youth jumped in front of the bus and slapped its window, jumping up and down. The bus started to pull away. Eamon said, “No, no.”  We ran after the bus. Eamon said, “What are we going to do?” We ran like kids, with our sides touching.

It was grey and windy. We slowed to a jog as we got near the bus. A policewoman waved at the driver to let us on. The bus was full and silent. Shoppers, pensioners. We found a seat. Eamon sat by the window. The policewoman was telling the driver to take another route. We heard her say, “They’re waiting with bricks all along the High Street.” An old man with a plastic bag shouted out, “What’s this? How long? I want to go home.”

The policewoman stepped off the bus and the door closed. The bus began to move. Eamon looked at me. He exhaled and rolled his eyes.

As we drove away  we noticed something happening outside. Ten or fifteen lads came running down the slope from the pub. They were angry and laughing. Through the bus windows we could hear their noise on the wind. “Time to leave,” Eamon said.

A siren screamed. The bus stopped. The lads were running around outside. There were cops among them. Eamon said, “Come on, come on, let’s go.”  Then some cops motioned to the driver and he opened the door. A big cop with a hook nose shouted in at him. The faces of the passengers around me were long and rigid. I could smell Eamon’s breath.

Eamon said, “Cover up your scarf.” I pushed the scarf down into the neck of my Berghaus. One by one the lads got onto the bus. They filled up the aisle. Single file at first. Then towards the end, as the coppers pushed them, they began to pile on in twos and threes. There were fifteen or twenty of them. They didn’t look at anything or anybody else. They talked and joked amongst themselves. Their voices were like shards of glass.

Their clothes were spotless and pressed. Every shirt, jacket and pair of jeans looked new. You could almost smell the new cloth and the cellophane of packaging. Their shoes squeaked. Everything was in deep, strong colour. Dark blues, reds, deep beiges. Bright checked collars on the shirts. Faces and necks and backs of heads shaved. The smell of booze and cologne.

I wondered where they all got their money. I didn’t look at Eamon. I could sort of feel him sitting there, stiff as a board. The bus turned and a couple of the lads swung into me. I got a denim arse in my face, then a loosely flung arm. They were all talking about the fighting.

“That wanker in the green shirt.”  “Fucking cunt.”  “’Oi, Green Shirt’- that’s what Dennis said- ‘Oi, Green Shirt’.”  “’Green Shirt, come here.’”  “Wanker.”   “Run away, you fat fucker, before you get hurt.”  “He nearly got the fucking beating of his life.”

The bus took another corner.  The lads slammed into me again. One or two of them had started looking around at everyone. Eamon’s leg was jammed up against mine. I looked at him sidelong. His face was white. His eyes went to my scarf. Under his breath he said, “Mate, we are in mortal danger.” I nodded. I put my hands up to tuck in the scarf. Then I put them down again. I tried to see in the bus window if the scarf showed. Every other passenger’s face was turned out towards the road.

We hadn’t taken the High Street. We were on a small road in the middle of an estate. I looked around from the corner of my eye. The lads next to Eamon and me were staring at our faces.

There was a bang as a can of beer smacked into a handrail.

One of the lads said, “So where are we now, top of the league?”

They all piped up. “Second.”  “Joint top.”  ”Dunno.” “How many goals have we scored?”

Northampton Town were somewhere near the bottom of the league. Fulham were joint top.

“Wigan have scored more goals,” one of them said. Then another said something about the Golden Lion pub near Putney Bridge.

I felt Eamon looking at me. I looked at him. He was trying to stop himself grinning. His mouth looked dry as a rice cake.

He mouthed at me, “They’re Fulham.” His grin got bigger. His eyes were happy. He nodded at my neck.

“You can get your scarf out,” whispered Eamon Sheen. “They’re Fulham.”